It's Not How it Seems
by QuietParadox
Summary: What if the books were all a lie? Just a cleverly written veil for the most powerful family in the world's secrets. Branch tensions are high, morality is low. The Cahill's are real and the Clue Hunt isn't over, it's only just begun and 15 year old Lizzie is going to be thrown right in the middle of it. In the world of the Cahills, nothing is how it seems.
1. Carolyn's Chemistry Experiment

**Hello everyone! I'm not dead! In fact I've been editing like crazy. Some of you may have already read this story but I highly recommend that you reread it. I've done a lot of editing and quite a few things have changed. Enjoy!**

"Oh my gosh Carolyn! You're going to blow up the entire school!" I exclaimed as I walked into the science classroom to find that my roommate was once again attempting chemistry. It was a strange feeling to just walk into a classroom to finish an experiment for science class and find your roommate working over some crazy experiment that I knew was nothing that Mrs. Birding would assign. I took a quick look around the room. The experiment in question was an angry-looking green bubbling concoction over top of a Bunsen burner that was looking more unstable by the minute. The classroom was empty except for Carolyn and I and, Carolyn's curly blonde hair wasn't even pulled back right, if she didn't set the school on fire she was going to set her hair on fire.

"But Lizzie! I've nearly got all the clues! I just need to get my hands on some Uranium-"

"The last thing you need is Uranium," I tried to grab one of the ingredients from the table, "You can barely handle working with salt!" I quickly added, slightly laughing at my own joke. Carolyn with Uranium would probably mean a giant crater 20 miles wide; of course anyone who is untrained with the use of radioactive materials would probably end up blowing something up or creating an uncontrollable reaction that would result in either death, an explosion, or in the rare case that you did something right only radiation poising which would most likely end in death.

"No, the last thing you need is Uranium, Miss Science Prodigy," Carolyn retorted, referencing some of my crazy science experiments, of course I had never used Uranium or any radioactive element in my experiments she knew that if I has gotten a hold of anything like that it probably wouldn't end up well either. Carolyn, still snickering at her own joke picked up a vial. I caught a glimpse of the label.

"How in the world did you get king cobra venom?" I asked as I frantically snatched the vial from her hands before she could dump it into the beaker which was looking like you didn't want to be within a few feet of it. The fact that Carolyn had somehow retrieved this ingredient that I would have thought would have been nearly impossible to get in the middle of Oregon slightly scared me.

"E-bay," She said simply while trying to grab the vial from my hands. I stepped back scanning the classroom for somewhere to put the vial.

"Who in the world sells king cobra venom on E-bay?" I asked, trying my best to keep it as far away from her as possible and not laugh. The mere thought of someone selling king cobra venom on E-bay was kind of silly.

"I don't know! Someone from Ohio." She exclaimed, jumping up and down to try and reach the vial that I was holding as high as I possibly could.

"Carolyn, you do know that the Cahill's don't exist and by creating this serum thing the only thing that will happen is that you will blow up the school!" I shouted, putting the vial on the highest shelf in the classroom. A shelf I knew Carolyn was too short to reach.

"The Cahill's do exist I know it, and as if you haven't blown something up before! I know you got kicked out of your last school for creating a huge hole in the science department," Carolyn looked pleased, a smirk creeping across her face, she knew she had countered well, if she didn't get so easily distracted she would have made a nice addition to the debate team.

"That was nothing like this though, at least I was trying an actual scientific experiment, the Sodium Thiopental that I was trying to make just happened to back fire a bit," I quickly explained. It had been a sad, yet exhilarating experiment. Yes I did create a huge gaping hole in a class room, but I did successfully create Sodium Thiopental. Although creating a truth serum happened to limit how believable my lies were. I was a fairly good liar and I was normally able to get myself out of most sticky situations, but having been exposed to a somewhat potent truth serum did complicate things.

"It's nearly the same thing!" Carolyn said before she proceeded to attempt to get the vial from atop the shelf. I used that time to properly dispose of the bubbling concoction she had managed to make. "Hey!" she shouted when she turned around with the vial in hand and realized that her work had just basically been thrown away.

"Come on we need to get out of here or I'll throw away your venom too." I threatened. Strictly speaking I was already planning on throwing away the venom but it was a good threat to keep her occupied.

"Ugh, fine Lizzie. But I'm going to finish that serum one day and prove to you that the 39 Clues are real! Then you'll have to admit I was right!" She said as she stormed out of the classroom. I followed behind her, grabbing my book bag before leaving and turning off the lights. Thanks to a little messing around with the security system on my part nobody would ever know that Carolyn and I were in the science lab. Those kinds of things were just natural precautions I took; I couldn't get expelled from another school. I didn't know what it was that I had done to make my parents send me away to boarding school after boarding school. I felt so rejected from them, I hadn't seen any member of my family for the past 5 years. Ever since I was 10. Two years ago however, my parents had gotten a divorce. I wasn't sure why, but it totally changed everything. I rarely got letters after that, and if I got anything from them it was a short e-mail from my dad asking how I was. I missed the long e-mails that I used to receive every week, the ones detailing every funny thing Chloe said. It was still a nice surprise to see an e-mail from my dad, but it had been a year since I had gotten one from Mom. I assumed that she was too busy with her work to bother writing to her reject child. From as far back as I could remember Mom had always been busy with work so my relationship with my dad had always been better. What I couldn't understand was why I never received anything from him since the divorce. I didn't like not being able to understand things. Carolyn had said something along the lines of 'divorces change people' and 'maybe he's just busy' but neither one really made sense to me. I had grown to accept it though. There are somethings that are just beyond my power to change.

**I hope you liked it. Please comment your thoughts and critiques as I'm always looking to improve. **

**Safety tip: Don't question Carolyn's OTP. **


	2. Schrodingers Cat and the Fanfiction

**Congratulations! You've made it to the second chapter, I'm really proud of you. Have a cookie, don't worry I didn't poison them. That's Evelyn's job. ****_Whose Evelyn? _****You may ask. Well you'll have to just keep on reading to find out. This is a short chapter here. Enjoy!**

"So what do you think, about Schrödinger's cat?" I asked while lying on my back, staring at the ceiling. The book I was reading was lying next to me. I didn't know that I was talking to myself, in all honesty I thought I was having a discussion with Carolyn. I discovered a minute or two later that Carolyn was writing fanfiction on some forum. "Are you even listening to me?" I asked, flipping over on my stomach to face Carolyn who was sitting in front of her lap-top.

"Ya," She said absentmindedly, I knew she was lying, her mind was somewhere else. "Something about a dead cat," I sighed at her over simplification. "But anyways, Ian or Jonah?" She continued focusing back in on her fanfiction.

"What?" I asked, a quizzical look crossing my face. I had a feeling that she was doing something 39 clues related.

"Who should I pair Amy with?" She responded as if it were blatantly obvious, which it wasn't. This confirmed my suspicions of it being 39 clues related.

"I don't know! I thought we were talking about Schrödinger's cat!" I exclaimed.

"What's that?" Carolyn asked, finally turning her attention away from "It's a Cahill life" the fanfiction she had been working on for the past month.

"Oh my gosh! It's what I've been talking to you about for the past 15 minutes." Sometimes I really wondered how we were matched together as roommates; while I preferred physics and engineering Carolyn's main interest was literature, music, and chemistry (whether or not she was good at chemistry was a whole different discussion). Her attention was hard to win, and I paid attention to nearly everything.

"Oh, I'm sorry; I didn't realize you were talking to me. You do talk to yourself some times. I just thought you were talking to yourself, so I tuned you out. Sorry," She said timidly, apologizing. The thing was that I couldn't be mad at her. She'd stuck with me through my parent's divorce, she was always there to vouch for me if someone suspected that I had maybe disabled the security system, and she always had my back, and I always had hers. I kept her out of trouble; she kept me out of trouble. We needed each other, without Carolyn I don't know where I would be; probably in another school.

"Sorry I yelled at you, and with that whole Amy thing I'd go with Ian," I said, returning a small smile.

"Good choice, an Amian. Mine will be the best one ever!" She smiled comically and then returned back to the computer, her face illuminated by the electronic glow of the screen.

"Okay," I said laughing a bit. Feeling our conversation come to a close I picked up my book opened it to where I had left off **aI nd** only a minute or so later I found myself lost in the amazing world of quantum theory.

**I told you it was short. Would I lie to you? Well maybe ... but that's besides the point. **

**Safety Tip: Don't fall out of trees when you're listening into conversations you're not supposed to hear. **


	3. The Courtyard

**Well I'm all out of ideas for openings so enjoy. **

When I was younger and still living with my parents we had a beautiful courtyard right off of the library. I used to read my books under this huge weeping willow that stood in the corner. The grass surrounding the tree was always lush and soft, during the summer holidays I always would bring a pile of books outside to read. The shade the tree provided kept my pale skin from getting burnt and the bark was just soft enough that I could lean my back up against it. Then when I was done reading I'd climb as high as I could before I got close to the glass ceiling and too near the fake branches. I never really figured out why there were fake branches on that weeping willow but I could still climb pretty high despite them. When I got older I tied a swing to the sturdiest branch. I used to swing back and forth for hours, or lean against the rope while I devoured book after book, while the gentle swing lulled me to sleep. It was probably my favorite place in our house. Mom used to have her meetings in the courtyard too. When those were happening I wasn't allowed to play there.

There was one occasion; I was eight years old, where I was playing up in the branches when mom and her work friends came in.

"Elizabeth, are you playing in here?" Mom had called, and I didn't answer. Little eight year old me was curious, per normal, so I stayed as quiet as I could, wanting to know what mom did at her meetings. Normally she went all over the place for work and wasn't at home much more than a few days a week, but sometimes she had her meetings at our house, which were always interesting because my Aunt Lillian always came during those meetings and taught me tons of new things. But I didn't care about Aunt Lillian probably being here, I was too interested in what mom's meetings were about.

Since they were on the other side of the courtyard I had a hard time hearing everything they said, so I had to lean in as far as I could. But then I heard them mention my name.

"Janette, Elizabeth needs to be told soon," My breath caught in my throat and I nearly lost my grip on one of the branches I was holding onto. I leaned in closer.

"She's _too_ young, I got pulled in too young and I don't want the same thing for her," I was pretty sure that this was mom. The voice sounded familiar, but it was a different voice than she used at home, it was more official sounding, every word was clearly spoken and had purpose. Very different from the mom I knew at home, but yet there was still that wisp of familiarity. But mom's voice wasn't the strangest part of the meeting, it was the fact that they were talking about me. Why would they be talking about me during a business meeting?

"She's exactly what we need, she's already showing the signs, her affinity towards science is astounding, we've seen her test scores, her intelligence is already beyond what we were expecting, with the proper training she could, no, would be great," one man urged. His voice reminded me of my moms, powerful, thoughtful. He seemed rather convinced on his point, that I was ready for something, perhaps college? They were talking about my test scores.

"I told you, she's not ready for-" This was my mom again.

But mom never finished her sentence as curiosity got the best of me and my right arm reached for another branch which would have let me lean farther in. I hadn't realized my mistake until I was tumbling out of the tree. I had grabbed one of the fake branches; thankfully there were branches below me to brake my fall as I plummeted towards the ground screaming.

My mom and the others had heard my scream as I fell out of the tree and they all rushed over to where I was lying. Thankfully I hadn't broken a bone or gotten a concussion, but I could tell by the look my mom was giving me that I was in a lot of trouble.

Before my mom could start yelling at me the alarm went off. It was a scary high pitched squeal and all the lights in the house had turned red and started flashing, I knew it was because of me grabbing one of the fake branches. The first time I had climbed the tree when I was younger I had went to high and broke one of the fake branches, I set off the alarm that time. Only a few seconds later my dad rushed into the courtyard carrying my younger sister Chloe and Aunt Lillian trailed behind him.

"What's going on Janette? Why is the alarm going off?" Dad asked frantically before realizing that I was pushing myself up from the ground.

"It was Elizabeth, everything's fine. Could you take her to her room please? I'll be talking with her in a little bit," Mom's voice was stern, she was clearly angry, her work friends all looked surprised, but at the same time they also looked very pleased which I thought was odd. Mom pulled out her phone and a few seconds later the alarms turned off.

"I'm sorry, I was just curious," I mumbled as I slowly stood up. Mom's work friends were all whispering to each other while they opened up briefcases or pulled file folders out of the insides of their jackets. I made eye contact with them for a moment before going with dad up to my room. One man had looked suspiciously like my uncle Arthur.

That was the majority of my childhood, reading books, eavesdropping on conversations I knew I wasn't supposed to hear, sneaking onto my parents computer to see if I could find anything. But I guess that's how most kids live their childhood. Except most kids haven't spent five years in boarding schools. Most kids actually talk with their parents. And most kids aren't stuck eating the disgusting cafeteria food for every single meal. It was a sad fact that Calderwood, my school, didn't have the best food in the world and that I was stuck eating it three times a day. If it wasn't for the salad bar I probably would have starved before my first semester. Carolyn for some reason really liked the food. I think all of her failed chemistry experiments messed with her sense of taste to prefer cardboard over actual food. Of course Carolyn also believed that the 39 clues were real so I couldn't really judge her too much based on her chemistry experiments. I would have assumed that Calderwood would have had the money to at least provide a decent meal to its students considering quite a few of the students either belonged to politicians or the very wealthy who had nothing better to do with their money than get rid of their children for a few years.

The thing with Carolyn was that I couldn't pull the 39 clues away from her. I might try to help her come to terms with reality that the 39 clues weren't real, but I couldn't do much more than that. Although I felt like I had a family that didn't care about me she barely had a family. She'd gotten into Calderwood on a full scholarship and never received e-mails or letters. Her mom had died when she was seven and her dad had to take care of her three younger brothers after his music career failed. They didn't even live in the same country any more, they had moved to Canada a year ago, a little before my parents' divorce. Taking away these books, would be like taking away the little family she had left. I couldn't do that, although I might tease her about her slight obsession (although slight is a bit of an understatement) with the 39 clues, I couldn't bear to take away something like that, even if it meant dealing with Carolyn when she somehow got a hold of king cobra venom on eBay. I could handle that. If I could handle Ms. Leak when she didn't have her coffee in the morning I could handle anything.

**I mean what child hasn't fallen out of a tree while listening to conversations they're not supposed to hear? **

**Safety Tip: Don't insult Ms. Starling**


	4. Lizzie's Mistake

**So this chapter used to be two chapters but I think you guys will prefer it if I just squash them together. Get ready for some teenage drama. Okay, don't worry I'm joking. There's only a little drama. This chapter is still dedicated to you Lily! (Updated on 4/23/16)**

"Ugh!" Carolyn shouted, storming into our dorm room. I quickly looked up from my homework to see Carolyn plop onto her bed, face first into her pillow.

"What's wrong now?" I asked her, dreading the answer.

"It's that stupid Ms. Starling!" She shouted sitting up just long enough to say that. I was pretty sure I knew where this was going and I began to mentally prepare myself for what was to come.

"You mean our history teacher?" I asked.

"Yes! She just can't handle the truth!" Oh dear…

"Oh gosh, what did you do now?" I asked, knowing that this would be another trip to the office for Carolyn. This had been her fourth incident with Ms. Starling since the beginning of the semester.

"It honestly wasn't my fault," She said sitting up and grabbed her book, wanting the conversation to end. She knew that my signal for the end of a conversation was me picking up my book, but I wasn't going to let her get away that easily.

"What happened?" I asked again, more sternly this time, pushing myself up from the chair.

"It wasn't really anything to get mad about,"

"Carolyn, what happened?" I pulled the book from her hands and looked her straight in the eyes.

"Ugh," she growled realizing she'd have to tell me, "I just simply told her that she was too stupid to be an Ekaterina, specifically a Starling." She spat out quickly before grabbing her book from my hands and pretending to read.

"You did what!" I shouted, this was exactly what I was afraid she would say, "Carolyn! You're going to get yourself in more trouble than I can get you out of one of these days! Where would you go if you got kicked out?" I paused for a second to regain my composure, not wanting to think of Calderwood without Carolyn. "This needs to stop. Now. Are you willing to give up a full scholarship for some books? What would your mom think if you did?" I stopped suddenly realizing my mistake; Carolyn looked about ready to cry. "Oh, Carolyn I'm…"

"Don't mention my mom to me again," tears were welling up in her eyes as she ran into the bathroom and locked the door behind her. I was about to say something when I realized it was probably best not to say anything. That's when I realized I had a few tears in my own eyes. I quickly wiped them away, and left the room. There were a few things I had to resolve with a few teachers.

After about a day Carolyn decided that it wasn't worth it to be mad at me. Especially when I went and personally wrote letters to every single teacher she had ever angered or offended in any way and sent them out. Of course I had written them as if she had sent them. What the teachers didn't know wouldn't hurt them. I already had most of these letters written up for a situation just like this in case I needed to make up something to her so within an hour they were all sent out. By the time Carolyn emerged from the bathroom there were small red lines running down her cheeks from her tears and her nose was runny. She said thank you in A.S.L. before she went to sit on her bed and do her homework.

The odd thing is that I knew she wasn't super mad anymore, but she still acted like it. That is until she broke her steamy silence and said,

"I'm sorry I yelled at you…" Her words were emotionless but I knew that she meant it. I smiled at her, and for just a moment she smiled back, before returning back to her book. She was still the Carolyn I knew, so I let her be. She'd return back to her normal self within the hour.

It actually took about a day before she was completely back to normal. A whole day of trying to entertain myself. I spent a lot of time on the internet, a lot of time editing essays that needed to be turned in on Monday, a lot of time twiddling my thumbs, and a lot of time planning pranks. It was sudden, when she returned back to normal, one moment she was silent, the next moment she was giggling and smiling, and it was all due to her homework.

Sunday night, I was reading and she was on her computer, typing away at her genealogy homework. I always found it odd about how they had genealogy classes in a high school, but it was a boarding school for highly capable students so it sort of made sense. I never had taken the class, knowing that my family was too large to ever be able to make a suitable family tree so I had stuck with the more practical electives such as wood shop (which in retrospect wasn't a good idea since I was a terrible artist and basically doing art with wood and large sharp tools never really ended well, and engineering. I really had enjoyed engineering and my teacher liked me because I seemed to have a natural gift for the subject, but again I also happened to have a natural gift for hacking, so whether or not natural gifts are a good thing is beyond me. But because of my 'natural gift' he always gave me very interesting projects to try. For example, he had me design several parts for our schools robotics team. This, for once, actually turned out fairly well and in my opinion the claw-like contraption I had designed was the sole reason they actually did well at competitions.

"Lizzie come look at this!" Carolyn shouted, I quickly got up keeping my blanket wrapped around me as I wobbled over towards where she was sitting, smiling to myself as she was actually talking to me.

"What is it?" I asked, peering over her shoulder at her computer screen which was on a genealogy website. She had her family brought up, probably having to do with creating yet another family tree. I swear her genealogy class has probably made at least four family trees in the past month or so.

"What's so interesting this time?" I asked, trying to be as polite as possible, but inside I was groaning. It was probably just some random fact that she had discovered about her family like normal. But if it was enough to get the Carolyn I knew back, I'd take it.

"Well, I just found out my several greats grandfather was this really famous photographer a long time ago. He took pictures of all these famous people like Lincoln, and whoever the president was that was before Lincoln,"

"Do you mean James Buchanan?" I asked, retrieving the list of presidents from my mental encyclopedia, which was basically where I kept all and any random facts or information I picked up through reading or just hearing random facts.

"Who was that?" Carolyn was looking at me like I was just making up names.

"The 15th president of the United States," I said slowly, giving her a strange look because she didn't know the 15th president. Of course most people can't list all of the presidents in order like I can so it's understandable that she might not know it.

"Nope, it wasn't him; I meant the president after Lincoln, wasn't his name like Andrew or something?"

"Good job!" I said over enthusiastically realizing that I probably sounded rude too late, "Andrew Johnson was the 17th president of the United States!"

"YES! I got one right!" She shouted, thankfully ignoring my apparent rudeness. This was the Carolyn that I knew, funny, over-excited about everything, creative, and sarcastic. She was back.

"So is that all you wanted to show me?" I asked, starting to walk towards my bed.

"No, I wanted to look you up too! Maybe you'll be related to some famous king or politician, or maybe we're related!"

"I don't think we're related, but you can go ahead and check,"

"Okay, could you spell out your name?"

"Elizabeth Marie Elder," I said slowly, then I spelled it out so Carolyn might actually spell something right for the first time.

"Okay, does that look right?" I nodded. She did a little more typing before clicking the submit button. The computer stood still for a moment, while a little circle turned in the center of the screen, letting us know that it was searching for me. Another second later it brought up every Elizabeth Marie Elder that was currently alive. There were about 75 results. Then we narrowed it down by age, and the results dwindled dramatically. I quickly glanced at the results. There were four Elizabeth Marie Elder's that were under the age of 18 and two of them didn't even live in the United States.

"I'm not here," I said quietly, before looking over the results again.

"That's rubbish! Everyone is on here. Try your mom's name," So she typed in Janette Pearson, this time she came up. But when we clicked on it there was nothing there. It only displayed the message of _"__We're sorry, there is no recorded family history of Janette Pearson in our data bases, we apologize for any inconvenience,"_

"It's okay Carolyn; they can't have everything on here,"

"I would've thought that you might've been on here though…" she trailed off, I patted her shoulder.

"Maybe next year I'll take genealogy and freak out Mr. Eccleston when I tell him that I'm not on there and have him do all the family researching for me," I smiled down at her. She giggled for a second, probably imagining crazy Mr. Eccleston going mad over trying to find any information on my family. It was actually pretty funny to think about, and I left Carolyn to finish her homework while I returned to my bed. Still wrapped in my blanket.

**So much foreshadowing, it makes the writer in me get so excited! I'm sure most of you have figured it out, you know this is a 39 clues story. And did anyone like my subtle Doctor Who reference right there at the end? Let me know if you caught it. I'm super excited about the update that's coming for the new chapter. Things are finally going to get really 39-clues-y (It's a word, I'm an Ekaterina and I say it's a word). **

**Safety Tip: Don't leave Dr. Seuss books lying on the floor.**

**-Emily (AKA QuietParadox)**


	5. Nightmares

**Hey guys! I've got a treat for you! A super duper long chapter. I was trying to see if there was any way that I could split this up but I couldn't figure it out, plus I think it's just good to read in one sitting. So ya, I felt kind of bad about this chapter, at least to Lizzie. You'll see why later. Well I hope you enjoy. And since I'm starting to get into some more 39-clues-y stuff I'll do a bit of a disclaimer. (Updated 4/23/16)**

**Me: **Lizzie come do the disclaimer, I put your life on the line multiple times in this chapter so I think it's fitting that you get to do it.

**Lizzie:** Yes, and by putting my life on the line you totally mean messing with my mental stability right?

**Me:** It's just a backstory. Just do the disclaimer.

**Lizzie: **QuietParadox does not own the 39 clues, it belongs to the authors of those books. She does own me though, and continues to be very very mean to me.

Ms. Leak was probably the most boring teacher in the entire world. No, scratch that, the entire universe (assuming that aliens do actually exist). Her voice was so mind-numbingly dull that I couldn't help but compare her to a leek. Her name was about as close to leek as you possibly could get and she even looked like a leek; she was really tall and skinny, with these little tuffs of hair on the top of her head. It was a good comparison to keep myself occupied during literature. Carolyn was lucky; she had ended up with Mr. Fraser. He constantly made Doctor Who jokes and references and he actually made the text sound interesting while Ms. Leak made even the most exciting of texts sound dead and dry. Like someone had come and beat it down with a hammer. So I started doodling on my papers, some random equations, leeks, Schrödinger's cat, and a few other things. My doodles, which in actuality really sucked, surrounded the whole outside of the paper. By the time the bell was just about to ring my pencil lead was just a dull little stub and I had drawings in every clear space on the page. I was seriously hoping that we wouldn't have to turn it in. I looked up towards the clock, only two more minutes left. I started packing up with everyone else; we were as quiet as we could possibly be so that Ms. Leak wouldn't hear us.

"Don't start packing up yet," It was Ms. Leak, she had caught us. She turned around, and we all had to stare into her vegetable looking face. "You can all stay after class for one minute just for ignoring my valuable teaching. You'll all-" But she never finished. Instead her voice was replaced with flashing lights and a squeal that resembled the fire alarm. It was a very similar security system to the one we had at home, mainly since my Uncle Arthur designed it. Which is one of the reasons I even got in here, although the particular one we had at home was way more advanced than the one that was here at Calderwood.

"Lock down, armed intruder on campus." The headmistress's voice came over the intercom, calm and controlled. It was a recording, they had a bunch of preset ones for various emergencies or drills. Panic washed over the whole room just as quickly as the fire alarm had. Everyone was following lock-down procedures. Except me.

I was lost in childhood memories, the flashing lights, the squeals, the intruder, it all brought back a memory that I had hoped that I had omitted from my memory.

I was 9 years old, about 6 months before I left for Anchorage Hill, my first boarding school. I remember that you couldn't see the moon that night because I had been trying to look for stars with my telescope but the clouds had gotten in the way. The night was crisp and smelled like the chimonthanus flowers that Dad had planted a few years back. Although I was supposed to be sleeping I was instead sitting with the windows open on the window seat reading my favorite Stephen Hawking book. I remember that it was windy that night since the drapes were blowing in my face and the March winds kept catching the pages of my book so I had to hold them down.

I wasn't exactly sure what time it was, but I knew it was late, since I was starting to feel tired. Both my mom and my dad were still up though so it was probably sometime around midnight. I was also getting ready to actually go to bed since I kept drifting off and losing my place in my book which was annoying. But as I closed my book I heard the alarms go off. I was pretty used to them now since we had been having some troubles with the security system and false alarms so I had kind of ignored them as I started walking towards my bed. That's when a giant grappling hook flew through my open window and caught on the window sill. Mom didn't like it that I had been leaving by bedroom window open and she had come in to my room nearly every night to close it and then proceed to chastise me for it the next morning. I however, being a 'rebellious' little nine year old continued to disobey. If anyone was to blame for the events of that night it was probably me for leaving my window open.

The sound that the hook had made when it hit the window caused me to turn around, I wouldn't have probably known it was there if it wasn't for the loud clunk it made as it connected with wood. I stared at it for a moment, trying to get a grasp at what was going on. When I finally realized I started running towards the door, knowing that I needed to get out like Mom had told me. A few times a year she always reminded me of what I was supposed to do if an intruder entered the house or something odd was happening. I was pretty sure that a giant grappling hook flying through my window constituted as odd. It mainly consisted of getting to one of the safe rooms on each floor, getting to my closet which had an escape hatch to one of the safe rooms, or if I couldn't accomplish either of those, finding her. In my frantic panic to get away from the window and run for the door I tripped on a book I had lying on my floor and my feet flew out from under me. Stupid Dr. Seuss. I was lying on the floor, staring at my window, trying to scramble to my feet when two people climbed through my window. Wearing all black, speaking with heavy accents, and they had guns. I screamed, as any scared out of their wits nine year old would have, hoping that Mom or Dad would appear any second to chase the scary people away.

I don't know what it was in me but I somehow made it to my feet, in a frantic last-stitch effort to reach my closet where I knew there was an escape hatch for emergency situations like this, I knew I wouldn't be able to reach the door that led to the actual hallway in time. Both of the people who were pulling themselves through my open window seemed to be twice my height and I knew I couldn't outrun them.

I didn't make it to my closest in time though. I couldn't get the door open fast enough. One of them had the collar of my pajamas in their grip and yanked me away from the closet before I could even get the door halfway open.

"Where are they?" One of them asked with his heavy accent. He held me a few inches off of the ground by the neck of my pajamas, the other person who had come in with him was searching my room for something. He threw my blankets and pillows on the ground and shoved all my books off their shelves. I wanted to yell at him because firstly, those were my favorite books and you don't just disrespect my favorite books, and secondly because he messed up my bed which I had just made. However, yelling at these men didn't seem like the right decision at this point in time whilst dangling from my pajamas.

"What?" I had asked, nearly crying. I was squirming, kicking, waving my arms around, trying to somehow escape, but my squirms were useless, I was a scrawny little nine year old trying to fight someone who was three times my size.

"Your parents you stupid child," I didn't like being called stupid, according to Dad I was the smartest nine year old he ever met. Mom said I got it from her side of the family. The man who was holding me had is other hand over his gun, my eyes widened. These guys had guns. Why were these people in my rooms with guns asking where my parents were? My mind had supplemented the idea that they wanted to hurt them.

"Downstairs!" I cried, not knowing what else to do, I was too scared to lie. Even if they wanted to hurt them, I knew Mom would be able to take them on. Truth be told I wasn't entirely sure if they were downstairs or not but it was my best guess. A few seconds later the scary man was practically dragging me out of my room. He had twisted one of my arms behind my back in a very painful position after I had scratched his arm with my unsuccessful attempts to escape his clutches. He held the collar of my pajamas with his other hand. We went across the hall and down the stairs while the other person checked all of the rooms upstairs before following behind us. I was squirming the entire time, still trying my futile attempts to escape. Of course every time I squirmed he just twisted my arm even more and if it wasn't for the fact that I was already crying out of fear I would have probably been crying then. For a moment, as we were going down the stairs I caught a glimpse of Mom, she had Chloe in her arms, who was about five at that time, and was running into my room, using the back doors, the ones that were hidden in the walls while trying to go unnoticed by the person who was checking the rooms upstairs. I had wanted to scream to her but I didn't, not wanting to alert the scary people about her being there, especially when she was holding Chloe.

They seemed to know where they were going and made it to the Parlor just as quickly as I would have, maybe even faster since they could take longer strides than I could. Throughout the entire ordeal the alarms had been going off. They got to the parlor with myself in tow and saw my dad. He was fussing with the security system controls that were in one of the wall panels, obviously trying to turn them off. There were lots of interesting things hidden in the walls, sadly I was never allowed to touch or open them. Of course that didn't mean that I didn't try every now and again to see what they contained.

The man who was holding onto me cleared his throat rather loudly and Dad turned around, he probably wasn't expecting what he saw, or maybe he was since some of the security camera screens of the hallways were visible. The person who was checking upstairs appeared besides the man who was holding me just a few seconds later.

"What do you want?" Dad asked, somewhat calmly, somewhat frantically, as he turned around to see us. He looked startled, jumping back a little bit, but then he had steadied himself when he saw me, still squirming, shifting his attention from his previous question to me. "Let my daughter go," he said in a way that almost seemed like a threat and glared at the two men with a look that could've easily cut through steel. I had never seen my dad act like that before.

"You know what we want," I saw the other man pull out his gun and pointed it towards my dad, smirking. I didn't understand how he could be smiling when threatening to shoot someone. I remember how scared I was right then, little did I know that them threatening to shoot Dad was not the worst of the threats that they'd make that night.

"What's going on daddy?" I shouted staring at the gun, hoping that I was just going to wake up soon and it was all a terrible bad dream and that I just couldn't remember going to sleep.

"Shut it!" the man who was holding me muttered into my ear, again twisting my arm. I again tried to squirm away but as it turned out he was far stronger than I was and by trying to get as low to the floor as I could the only success I'd make was the success of getting my bare foot stepped on.

"It's okay Lizzie, I've got this," My dad said to me trying his best to be reassuring (he hadn't done a very good job of it though) before turning to the two men. "Now let her go, she isn't involved, she isn't a part of this, she hasn't done anything," He was scared, it was obvious in his voice. A surprising change from the sternness that he had only a few moments earlier. It was terrifying.

"What did Janette find in Bolivia? Tell us that and we'll go and leave your little family alone," The man holding me insisted. I could feel his grip tighten on my arm, he was probably leaving marks, maybe even bruises. As far as I was concerned, Mom had never been to Bolivia. A better question was why in the world she'd actually be in Bolivia in the first place if she had gone and why in the world they would want whatever she had brought back. The man holding the gun was still smiling, his finger hovering just over the trigger.

"I-I d-don't know anything and neither does she. Y-you won't get what you want here," Dad explained, he stuttered a bit as he talked and his eyes were darting all over the place, obviously looking for something or someone. He looked at me again, "please, she doesn't know what this is about, just let her go." The man holding the gun shook his head and Dad's façade of strength and fearlessness began to weaken even more.

"Where's Janette then?" He was talking about mom. What were they looking for in the first place? What would Mom know? Why was he talking about Mom in the first place? Millions of other questions swirled in my brain and I was about to ask but I decided against it. So I just squirmed some more. As it turned out I was a very good squirmer but a very bad escaper.

"S-she's not h-here. I t-told you, I d-don't know anything," I wanted to run to Dad, he had looked so scared, his eyes were focused on me. He was visibly trembling and his stuttering was getting worse.

"What a shame. As you know Janette and I go way back," he paused and mumbled something to the person holding the gun in a language I didn't understand, "Perhaps this will help you remember?" I saw Dad's eyes widen quickly, I turned my head towards where he was looking at and I immediately wished I hadn't. There was a gun pointed at me. Not a fake one like in the movies, but a real one. I didn't know what was going on anymore, strictly speaking I still don't know what happened that night, obviously there was something these guys wanted, there was a gun pointed at my head, and Mom was missing. I was just a scared little nine year old, caught in the middle of something that was way too big for me to understand. I of course started squirming even more and began crying again. I didn't want to die. I tried to run and find some way to twist out of how he was holding my arm but it was no good and he yanked me back to how I had been standing, pulling tightly against my pajamas.

"Daddy! Make them stop!" I cried. I wanted to be back in my room reading my book, away from all of this. I didn't know what was going on.

"Stop! Please! I told you she isn't a part of this!" Dad shouted frantically. He started running towards us but suddenly stopped when I felt the barrel of the gun resting on my head. My crying intensified. Dad had looked so scared and I'm sure I had looked just as scared as he did. There was a freaking gun pointed at my head.

"Tick tock Anthony," The man who was holding me said, using my dad's real name. Most people who came over either called him Professor Elder, Doctor Elder, or Mr. Elder. Never by his first name, and it was strange to hear it.

"I don't know!" Dad shouted, nearly crying. "Please let her go! Why would Evelyn think either of us would know? We don't!" I didn't know who Evelyn was but I had heard Mom mention that name a few times before when she thought I wasn't listening. "Please," he begged.

"Our orders are clear. Get what we came for no matter what. Even if it means dear little Lizzie here pays the price," The man holding me snickered, "time's almost up Anthony."

Dad was panicking, it was clear he was telling the truth. He didn't know. He frantically looked around, unsure of what else he could do. I was still crying, I could still feel the gun against my head, and I knew for certain that I didn't want to die. I hadn't even made it to high school yet. Where was Mom?

"Put the gun down!" came a voice from the door to the right of us. It was Mom. She ran in through the back door, her hair soaking wet from what I assumed to be the sprinkler systems. I wasn't as scared anymore (Of course I was still very scared as there was a freaking gun pointed at my head). Mom always handled bad situations, even during that one time when those women were following us while we were out shopping. She always saved the day. My crying had momentarily ceased, even though I could still feel the gun against my head. "Don't worry Lizzie, you'll be fine," Mom said reassuring me before turning her attention to my captors, "Now what do you want Desmond?" Apparently the person who was holding me was named Desmond. The fact that Mom knew this scary person was terrifying. Her voice however, despite the scariness of everything was even steadier than Dad's had been in the beginning, it was the voice she had used during those business meetings, she didn't seem to be scared at all. Mom was always good at hiding her emotions.

"I think you know what we want, and we better get it quick don't you think Lizzie?" He said, twisting my arm a bit more and causing me to yelp in pain. He was smiling, just like the person who still held the gun to my head. When I looked around for Dad however, he wasn't where he was last. The scary men didn't seem to notice though as they were focused on Mom.

"It's me you want, now leave her be," I remember that Mom's voice caught in her throat at that moment, something that didn't happen often. They didn't say anything and so Mom continued, "Please let her go," she reiterated. The two men looked at each other and smiled again.

"As I told your husband our orders are clear, we don't leave until we get the clue," This statement continued to support my belief that Mom was some sort of super-secret international detective. Although why that job constituted a gun being held to my head and people breaking into my house, I didn't know.

"This is low, even for you. Since when do your orders involve holding a little girl hostage?" Mom asked, her voice tight.

"Times change Janette, we don't live in the same world we used to," Desmond explained plainly. I had no idea what they were talking about.

"I will be willing to negotiate with you if you let her go," Mom said, her fists clenching at her sides.

"Evelyn doesn't want negotiations Janette, surely you know how she operates," Desmond said, I could feel his hand tighten around the collar of my pajamas. Mom's face suddenly changed and drained of color at the mention of whomever Evelyn was.

"Please," Mom said a little quieter, "Just let her go." The two men laughed.

"Janette Elder, begging! Oh what Evelyn would have paid to have seen this!" the man holding the gun exclaimed and Mom dropped her head, I had never seen her looking so beat before.

"Water lily roots," She muttered still looking at the floor, "now let her go," she added when she looked back up at me.

"You know Desmond, I feel that we're in a superior position here. We've got the entire branch at our fingertips," the man holding the gun said, his smile turning into a twisted smirk.

"I think you're right," Desmond said agreeing and Mom's eyes widened with fear. They hadn't let me go and there was still a gun pointed at my head, at any minute they could have blasted my brains out.

"No," Mom said, standing firm. She wasn't going to give into what they wanted anymore. "You promised, you got what you asked for now leave,"

"Oh? No you say? Well then I think we best be off, don't you think? We wouldn't want to break our word," Desmond said, I could tell he was smiling. The man holding the gun agreed and they started backing away. Heading for the closest door to outside. It's then that I realized they were still holding onto my arm and I wasn't getting away anytime soon. I had immediately started screaming and crying again. They weren't going to let me go. I didn't want to die, I didn't want to be taken away. I screamed to Mom as loudly as I could. The man who was holding the gun had changed his target from me to Mom. She was shouting at them to let me go. Everything was happening so fast in those moments. Before I could even begin a second round of screaming Desmond adjusted his grip on my arm and threw me over his shoulder in one movement. Interesting fact about shoulders, they are very bony and very uncomfortable places to be thrown over.

"Mommy!" I screamed as loudly as I could, reaching for her and kicking my legs and banging my arms into him as he moved even quicker towards the door now that he didn't have to drag me along.

"No! Stop!" Mom screamed and started rushing towards us. Desmond was opening the door when Mom started running towards us and the other man grabbed Desmond's gun and pointed it at me which caused Mom to stop in her tracks. There were guns pointed at both of us. I was still screaming her name, still crying, still kicking, still squirming, and still scared out of my wits. I was being kidnapped and Mom couldn't do anything about it or risk getting both of us shot.

"Watch out for Lizzie!" Mom exclaimed and I was immediately confused, who in the world was she talking to? Was she giving up on saving me? I later learned that she was referring to Dad who was outside with a strange looking gun. He shot them and I screamed as both men paused momentarily, dazed by being hit from behind, before crumpling down to the ground. Once I managed to wriggle out from underneath where they had collapsed I had ran up to Mom as fast as I possibly could, crying my eyes out. She picked me up and hugged me tightly. I didn't want to look at the men who were lying unconscious in our doorway, in fact it took me a good month before I'd ever walk through that doorway again. I never left my window open after that night. While Mom was holding me, Dad started chuckling slightly. Perhaps out of nerves, perhaps out of adrenaline, or perhaps because he actually thought he had done something worth chuckling over?

"Wow, I never thought I could take down a L-" But Mom stopped him before he could say anything else and he quickly ran off to find where Chloe was. I'm pretty sure it was the nerves and the sheer impact of what had happened that had made him chuckle like that. What he was about to say though, I never found out. I continued to hug Mom, not caring that her hair was soaking wet and that my neck hurt slightly from dangling from my pajamas. I didn't let go until she carried me up to her room where I fell asleep in her lap. Afraid that if I let go the scary men would come back. She had made a quick phone call when she thought I was asleep, asking for "clean-up assistance". I didn't know what that meant but I ignored it, not wanting to be puzzled with any more questions.

After that night we spent a week at my Uncle Arthur's house. Dad didn't want to return home but when we did our security system got boosted and I wasn't allowed to play outside alone any more. Frankly I didn't want to. I was too scared. Every time the security system went off in our house up until the point in which I went to my first boarding school I would think of that night and usually wouldn't come out of the safe room until Mom or Dad came to get me. It was a stain on my childhood and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get it out.

"Lizzie! Come on!" exclaimed Becca, one of the girls who sat next to me. I blinked a few times, glad that someone pulled me out of that horrific nightmare. The only difference was that nightmares aren't real, and this one was. "Hurry up; you can't just keep sitting there!" It was then that I realized my entire class was hiding behind or under desks. Mrs. Leak had locked all the doors and covered the windows. I was the only one still seated. In the back of my mind Desmond's voice echoed and I did my best to ignore it but it wasn't working. I could hear him laugh and taunt my Dad and Mom. I again tried to push his voice away and focus on what was going on. I was supposed to be sitting under my desk, hiding from whomever the intruder was. So I did, I hid under my desk, like I was supposed to. Trying not to think of guns, or Desmond, or intruders, but instead focus on the scratches on the tiled floor.

The funny thing was that I wasn't scared; actually I was more afraid of the memories than I was of the idea of an intruder being on campus. I knew it was silly to be afraid of just memories, but the thing with memories is that they stay will you the rest of your life. No matter how hard you try to forget them they always are there. Lurking in the dusty corners of your mind, ready to pounce on your unsuspecting conscious. The scariest times are when you can't escape from them, when they trap you and you can't run away.

Like I said, it's silly to be afraid of a memory. It's not real. It might've been real once, but that's in the past, memories are just….A quote came to mind.

"_You can close your eyes to reality but not to memories,"- _Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

I think that thought was the most frightening of them all.

**Well that was certainly interesting. Don't you all agree. Ya, I kind of feel bad, kind of don't. This is fun. Anyone have any ideas as to who Evelyn is or who those men were? Perhaps who the intruder is? Make sure to comment your guesses, predictions, and comments down below. I love reading them! **

**Safety Tip: Getting called to the office after a lock-down can never be good. **


	6. The Past Comes Back

**Greetings! I'm going to keep this one short. Please enjoy this chapter, I love all of my readers, especially those of you that review. You guys are great. Here's the chapter, enjoy. (Last updated on 5/5/16)**

It ended up being a false alarm.

All that fuss, just for a false alarm.

They ended up cancelling classes for the day, and thank goodness for that because I was pretty sure that my essay on the causes of the Cold War was not my best and it desperately needed another hour of editing.

I didn't go looking for Carolyn as I was walking back to our dorm, honestly I was hoping she wouldn't be there. I needed to be alone. I needed to shut myself off from the world and just do busy work. Keep my mind off of…I couldn't even think about it anymore without my heart beat picking up and those memories flooding back. I had thought that I had eliminated it from my memory. Those few minutes of just pure terror were branded onto my brain, just like all those silly little nursery rhymes are. You might not always be thinking about them, but they're always there, ready to come spilling out at even the slightest of triggers. I thought about that for a moment as I wandered through the hallways. I hadn't even told Carolyn about that one memory, even though she had basically spilled her life story to me over bowls of popcorn and all-nighters. I hadn't done the same to her. Hearing Carolyn's childhood made me think about how privileged I was, to have both a mom and a dad, to have a room to myself. I felt bad. She deserved more than what I was telling her. I decided right then that I was going to tell her more about my life. I was going to tell her why I was so scared of fire drills, why I woke up screaming that one night, what my childhood was really like. All the strange meetings, secret passages, safe rooms, locked doors, and fake branches that I had kept to myself. I was going to tell her and knowing Carolyn she'd make up some elaborate story to fit it all but we'd have fun and we'd finally be on equal terms. Well, at least I thought I was going to tell her.

"Elizabeth Elder, please report to the office," The headmistress's voice came over the intercom. I stopped in my tracks, everyone in the hall turned to face me. I gave a weak smile as I turned around and started walking towards the office. Getting called to the office after a lock down wasn't necessarily the best thing. The thing was that I wouldn't see Carolyn again that night. Actually I probably wouldn't see Carolyn again for a long time, maybe ever.

A billion thoughts were rushing through my head as I walked to the office. What if they found out about the chemistry experiments, or Carolyn somehow getting king cobra venom? I hoped that they didn't know about my messing around with the security systems. Or changing that one grade on that essay because it was clearly at least an A- not a B+. There were so many possibilities, so many things that could go wrong. I was so careful; I tried my best to make sure I wouldn't ever be caught. Yet here I was.

I grew increasingly more nervous the closer I got to the office. For a moment I wanted to turn around and go hide in my room. I decided against it, they had a master key for every room. It'd be pointless.

The office was in a separate building outside the main building of the school. The sky was grey, the sun was a mere inverted shadow on the clouds, and the wind blew my curly brown hair in my face. I hated January. It was too cold, too windy, and too snowy. Well somewhat snowy. This year in particular had more snow than Oregon normally got so it was a pleasant surprise. However, the one thing that really sucked about getting snow was that we wouldn't get snow days like all of the other schools. There was no point as most of us lived a whole 50 yards away from the school building.

When I was younger I used to love the snow, I spent hours playing in it since I was homeschooled and my dad had always said that if all the schools were closed for the day, then why couldn't our little school be closed too? Then we'd get all dressed up in our warmest of clothes and make snowmen that looked like Albert Einstein using the dry grass from the field that wasn't too far from our house for the hair. We'd build these huge snow forts and have snowball fights with each other. Dad normally won, apparently having the athletic skills of a seven year old was enough to beat a five year old.

Our house was the only house on our road but our road couldn't be the only road, there had to be other houses somewhere, maybe those houses had kids my age also playing in the snow. When I had asked Dad about that he said that they didn't like us. When I asked why, he said it was because brought the wrong type of company. I didn't ask any more questions about that. Mom and Dad both hated answering those kinds of questions.

I made it to the office, my stomach feeling like a big empty pit. I couldn't get expelled, not again. But like every other time I took a deep breath and headed in. Who and what I saw I didn't believe.

"Mom?"

**Sorry, cliffhanger. Got to love them, it makes my job as an author so much more fun! Of course it also makes your job as a reader less fun so please accept my most in-sincerest of apologies. **

**Safety Tip: Your parent using your full name is usually a bad sign. **


	7. An Unexpected Visitor

**Guess what! Ya I've got nothing. Hope you enjoy! (Updated 5/9/16)**

I couldn't believe it. Mom was sitting right there in the office, so either something really bad had happened and they called my mom, or something really weird was going on. I hadn't seen her in five years, at first glance I barely even recognized her even though her dark brown hair was cut in the same style that I remembered from my youth and she looked just about the same. For goodness sakes she was even wearing similar clothes. It was the second unwelcome blast from my past today. She smiled widely when she saw me and stood up to hug me. I didn't move, still too stunned that she was there.

"Lizzie! Oh you've grown up so much! Long time no see, am I right?" she chuckled for a moment, probably in response to my astonished looking face. I didn't laugh back, I didn't even smile back.

"What are you doing here?" I asked quietly, the headmistress sensed the tension in the room and quickly intervened.

"Elizabeth, your mother was the 'intruder' on campus. We've gotten everything all sorted out but she's come to withdraw you from Calderwood. She says that she will continue home-schooling you until graduation," the headmistress said. I looked at her for a moment, disbelief washed over me, and then I looked back at my mom, angrily. She was not just going to come and pull me away from my home again. Calderwood was my home.

"Excuse me Mrs. Benton, could you give Lizzie and I a moment please?" Mom smiled at the headmistress. Mrs. Benton agreed to step into her own office for a few minutes to let us talk. Honestly, there wasn't anything to talk about. I was going to stay here at Calderwood with Carolyn and all of my other friends and finish my studies and Mom would go. If she didn't want to be part of my life for the past five years then I didn't want to be part of hers now. "Lizzie, let me explain," Mom looked worried, she reached out for my hand but I pulled it away.

"No." I said sternly, looking at her straight in the eye, "I'm not leaving, I like it here. You obviously don't like me or else you wouldn't have basically ignored me for the past five years. What makes you think I'd want to go with you?" My voice came off harsher than I wanted it to. Mom looked at me for a minute, as if she was coming to realize how much I had changed since I was 10. Since before they sent me away.

"Lizzie, you need to understand. I'll explain everything later but we need to go. It's…It's not safe here anymore," she glanced out of the small window, "I know you probably don't understand right now, but it was for the best. There is nothing I want more than to have been able to spend those past few years with you. Now please listen to me," She paused and looked out the window again before darting her head back and I stared straight at her, trying to see if she was lying. I couldn't tell if she was or not. Either way I wanted to get back to my dorm, I wanted to get back to Carolyn, and I wanted her to leave. "Liz-" Mom started but I interrupted her.

"I thought you didn't care about me anymore. You never even e-mailed after the divorce. You never even explained the divorce. Dad doesn't even e-mail me or send letters anymore. I…" I stopped, trying to regain my composure. Admitting all of this to her was too much. "I thought that you had abandoned me, that you didn't want me, that I wasn't good enough," I felt myself get teary-eyed.

"Sweetie, it's not like that. I promise I'll explain everything later. Now we have to go," she stood up and opened her arms as if she would be expecting a hug from me this time. I blankly stared at her. How could she think that I'd be willing to forgive her so easily? I could see her breath catch in her throat when she realized I wasn't going to be hugging her anytime soon. "I'm so sorry, but come along now. The car is waiting out front and I've already signed the papers. You are no longer a student here. Quick let's get going," She opened and walked out the door, I stood in the doorway for a second staring at her. Wasn't there a saying about stranger danger? I felt like she was a stranger, five years is a long time to not know someone. I guess it's like high school reunions, you see those people that used to be the top of the class or the star of the football team 30 years later and they are totally different. It was like that, except it was with my mom. I knew that I knew her 5 years ago, perhaps those memories were just locked away somewhere. Sensing that I had lost this battle and even if I turned on the tears I wouldn't win, I trudged out the door.

"I'm assuming that I do not have a choice in this matter," I stated plainly, gazing at the headmistresses office.

"No, but honestly sweetie you'll thank me later," I didn't like how she kept calling me sweetie, it didn't feel right. The terms of affection were strange and were unwelcome to my mind. I did my best to ignore them. I had been Lizzie for the past five years, never anything else. As I walked outside into the cold and saw the dorm building I realized that Carolyn was still in there.

"Can I say goodbye to Carolyn?" I asked, looking confused as she started rushing towards the car door. She stopped in her tracks, her hand poised on the door handle.

"Who? Oh, I'm sorry, but we're already behind schedule as it is," I didn't like how she kept rushing everything. Was the car going to explode if I didn't get in it within 30 seconds or something?

"It'll just take a second-"

"A second we don't have! Now please hurry up Elizabeth. I promise, I'll explain everything," I knew there was no arguing with her when she used my full name. Whenever Mom had been mad at me or anything like that she always used my full name, it was kind of like an inner warning to get my act together or else things would get messy. So I followed her, eyes on the ground. I sighed as I walked towards the car, tugging my backpack higher onto my shoulder. At least I wouldn't have to worry about homework tonight…

**Evil evil homework, I sometimes wish I didn't have to worry about homework but I do...*sighs* Well I hope you enjoyed. Why do you think Lizzie's mom is rushing so much? Any other guesses about Lizzie's mom or what's going to happen next? **

**Safety Tip: Don't question your parental units. **


	8. I'm a what?

**So how does the 39 clues fit into this fanfiction? Well here it is *evil laugh* and since we've got a ton of 39 clues related material here I'll start with a disclaimer. Carolyn, since you've now dissappeared for awhile would you like to do this disclaimer? (Updated 5/9/16)**

**Carolyn: **Certainly! QuietParadox does not own my favorite series in the world, The 39 Clues. She does own the characters like me though! Enjoy!

Mom got in the driver seat and I stepped into the passenger seat. Staring out the window at Calderwood I realized how dramatic I was probably looking. I smiled for a moment, remembering multiple movies where the main protagonist stared dramatically at something they were leaving behind. The small smile didn't last long though.

I could just imagine Carolyn now, getting to our room only to find that I wasn't there, to find out that I wasn't coming back. How could I just leave her like this? No, I couldn't think about that. I couldn't think about every day that we had spent together, all 427 days, including holidays, because like me Carolyn didn't leave during holidays and we both stayed at the schools summer academic program. That way I'd never have to inconvenience either my mom or my dad over the summer or the holidays. I also couldn't think about Carolyn either living alone, or having to find a different roommate. As far as I knew Carolyn probably wouldn't get along with her new roommate. Actually the only reason we became such close friends is because when we first met I had somehow already gotten in trouble, and I hadn't even been at the school for more than a couple hours. Carolyn immediately deemed me awesome and then henceforth our friendship began. So I turned away from Calderwood and stared straight forward. I didn't want to think about anything, especially not Carolyn. However, Mom had other ideas.

"Lizzie?" Her voice was soft, almost as if she understood what I was feeling. I turned towards her to acknowledge that I was listening. "Do you remember that one night; I think you were eight, when those men came through your window?"

"Nine," I said quietly, not want to remember again for the second time that day.

"What?"

"I was nine and a half, not eight. It was six months before you sent me away, but yes I remember." I was shocked by how harsh my own voice sounded and I stared out the window again.

"That night is why we sent you away, those people were family members, and I didn't want you to be in any more danger. You were getting too old, you would start to figure things out before I wanted you too, and it wasn't safe. I know it sounds silly to have your own family members threaten to hurt you or it not being safe for you to be around them, but." She stopped for a moment, as if she was trying to find the right way to say it. "I assume you've at least heard of the 39 clues series?" I was confused, why would the 39 clues books have anything to do with this? Just the mention of the name made me think of Carolyn and I felt guilty again for leaving her. What if her new roommate wouldn't tolerate her obsession?

"Ya," I mumbled, remembering all of Carolyn's jokes about the books, and how she was literally jumping up and down when she read "The Sword Thief", and how she nearly cried when she found out one of the authors would be coming to a nearby book store. How many times she attempted to make the serum, how she somehow got king cobra venom from Ohio, and all the times that she got in trouble for talking out of term in class to correct the teachers history or say whether or not a specific person was a Cahill and what branch they were from. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"I told you I'd explain and that's it," What? Okay, my mom was officially crazy and I was stuck in a car with her. My day went from bad to worse in that instant.

"You mean to tell me that the books are the explanation for you pulling me out of school. A series of _fictional _books?"

"No," She hesitated for a moment and gripped the steering wheel a little tighter, "it's what the series is about. Now just let me explain. The books themselves were just written to hide the fact that the Cahill's and the clues actually do exist. I mean you don't believe me right here, I can see it on your face. What better way to hide the truth than to release the idea to the world but tell them it's fiction? The idea that every famous historical figure in the world is related somehow or another and that there is a set of 39 clues that when combined properly will make the drinker the most powerful human in the world is already unbelievable as it is. Oh," She stopped abruptly, probably sensing my confusion. Nothing she was saying made any sense. The 39 clues were not real and everything she was saying was probably some huge joke she was playing on me. At the same time though, I felt in my heart that maybe she might have been telling me the truth. If she was going to lie to me she wouldn't use the 39 clues as her cover up. "Well anyways. There are five branches, only four of which have serum enhanced abilities. Ekaterina, Lucian, Janus, Tomas, and Madrigal. We're Ekaterina's. The serum enhanced our intelligence, creativity, and ingenuity." That sort of made sense, school did come rather easily to me and I usually didn't have issues understanding complex concepts or memorizing large amounts of information. In fact according to Carolyn my memory and skills in science and math were far better than anyone's she had ever met before. Perhaps it did actually run in the family? I knew both Mom and the few family members I had met before like Uncle Arthur were both fairly intelligent. Uncle Arthur was a master of security systems and from what I had heard before, Mom used to be a professor at a university. It was where she had met Dad. "The other branches are Lucians, leadership skills, strategy, codes, spying; Janus basically are skilled in anything that has to do with the arts, music, song, dance, etc.; then there are the Tomas, basically athletics. Then the last branch is the Madrigal, we don't know a lot about them, nobody really does." She paused for a moment, "Are you still following?"

"Yes," More or less a truth, "so you mean to tell me that those books were all true? And that I'm really a member of this family or something like that? It all seems rather unlikely," I rolled my eyes a bit and thankfully she either didn't see or didn't want to comment on it. Mom used to hate it when I'd roll my eyes at her. Frankly I was resting at a 10% belief that she was telling the truth and a 90% belief that this was all some stupid lie.

"I know, but there are many things that will start making sense if you believe me…Remember that night again, the one when you were nine." Not again, not for the third time that day, of course just the mention of it sent my mind back to reliving that terrible night. "Those men were Lucian agents; I didn't think they'd ever go as far as to bring you into it. That was probably a mistake in judgement on my part," she reflected, "They wanted the clues, your father knew they existed but he isn't a Cahill so I never told him any of the clues that I knew. I didn't want to put him in any more danger than he would already be in as my husband. He was more of an honorary Cahill, whereas I am one of the branch leaders, well me and your Uncle Arthur," So now apparently Uncle Arthur was a part of this too. Unfortunately the scales were tipping and Mom was winning with around 22% of my belief. I still didn't want to believe her. "I know you were probably scared that night, and you had all the right to be. Your father was stalling as long as he could because he knew that they wouldn't hesitate to pull the trigger. The hunt makes a person ruthless, that's why I had to get you away from all of that. I couldn't bear to put you in any more danger than you were already in. Even though now you might be in more danger than you were at home with us five years ago," She was trying to explain why she sent me away. Why in the world she abandoned me for five years. Danger wasn't an issue, I wanted a family, not a roommate. At least the children in England during the Second World War were often sent away to the countryside with their siblings, but did I get to stay with Chloe? It wasn't fair.

"We were able to intercept a Janus e-mail where you were mentioned," She continued, "I don't know how they found out about you being here at Calderwood as I had made sure to let it slip that you were living with your father after the divorce," she stopped abruptly and focused on the road in front of her for a moment.

Curse Mom and her stupid story, she was winning. Everything that had happened when I was little started filling into this story. Mom's meetings, why Mom always left all the time (from what I figured branch leader was sort of like the president of the branch), why my entire family was so smart, why the neighbors never liked us, why those men came, and suddenly I found myself starting to believe. I hated it. She was winning, 45% of my faith was resting with her and I was desperately holding onto that last 6%. I wanted it all to be a lie so much, I wanted her to be lying and I wanted to go back to Calderwood.

"I guess it makes sense," I mumbled, my mouth defying my brain. So much for that 6%. Another thought came into my head, "In those meetings, the ones that you'd use to have in the courtyard. Why were you talking about me?" I asked curious for more answers. Perhaps I could find a hole in her story.

"My fellow Ekaterina's wanted you to start training to become an Ekaterina agent. I didn't want you to get pulled into our mess of a family too young like I was, so I told them no. They kept telling me you were old enough, especially after you started showing traits of a good field agent, like going undetected in trees, hacking into computers, reading things you weren't supposed to be, listening into conversations you weren't supposed to be listening too, etc., etc.. We were all planning on telling you when you were 10, but after the incidents of that night we all agreed that keeping you away from everything until you were 15 or 16 would be best. I was planning on waiting until you were 16, but again, intercepting that e-mail led me and your Uncle Arthur to pull you out now." Drat she was winning again.

"What about Dad?" I asked, and Mom paused. I took this time to continue the slow processing all of the information that was being thrown at me. What I found funny was that I could listen to a two hour lecture and then be able to recite it nearly word for word the next day, but I was having trouble understanding everything my mom was saying. Everything still sounded extremely unlikely but it was becoming more believable by the second. Why would she go through all this trouble to create an elaborate lie like this?

She took a deep breath, "your father, Anthony. He left. He originally wanted to leave after the incident that night but I convinced him to stick around to help with you and Chloe. Then something else happened and he couldn't handle it anymore. We agreed that he could leave the family, and live with Chloe, away from everything. However, Chloe would have the choice when she was old enough, whether or not to re-enter the family. Just like you have the choice. You don't have to be a Cahill. You can stay Elizabeth Elder, except you wouldn't be Elizabeth Elder. You'd have to change your name and life, and even then you might not be safe. But anyways, your father took a job in England, teaching mathematics at Cambridge. Chloe is with him," She looked off into the distance, still driving. I wondered what other incident happened to make him divorce Mom. I was about to ask but I decided against it, she looked too hurt. I started wondering if she ever got to see Chloe.

We sat in silence for a while. I watched as the Oregon landscape whooshed by, like it never even existed. I finally spoke about five minutes later.

"Is that why dad stopped sending me e-mails? The last one I got from him was about six months ago. He asked how I was, never even responded back after I answered," I looked at her, I stared at her hands. She still had her wedding ring on. She still loved him, he probably still loved her. I couldn't imagine how hard it would be to leave someone you love. But, I realized that I did know. I had known how it felt for five years. She looked surprised for a moment but then nodded solemnly; I caught her eyes glancing towards her ring. Again more silence.

"So tell me about Carolyn," Mom was trying to break the ice; she probably remembered me wanting to say goodbye to Carolyn and assumed that we were friends. She obviously wasn't very good at it. The last person I wanted to talk about was Carolyn. But I did. I told mom everything. I told her about how we laughed, how we cried, how she called Mrs. Starling stupid, the time she nearly blew up the school but I was able to fix, the time she came into our room screaming after Mr. Boyant gave her a 100% on her essay, even though he was one of the hardest graders in the school. It felt good to talk about Carolyn, so maybe Mom did know what she was doing. She chimed in at all the right places, laughed at all the right times, asked good questions. She was the perfect listener even if she sucked at breaking the ice.

I was getting ready to tell another story; at least an hour or two had passed in the car when mom interrupted me.

"Lizzie, I really missed you. I told myself when you were born that I'd never leave you. I'm so sorry that I broke that promise, I'll never leave you like that again," She blurted out, nearly crying but smiling at the same time. I smiled back but inside all I could think about was that you shouldn't make promises that you couldn't keep.

**Well what did ya think? Sorry if this chapter was a little boring, Lizzie really really really needed an information dump. Let me know if you have any suggestions for improvements. **

**Safety Tip: Choose your code name wisely. **


	9. The King, the Queen, and the Bishop

**Woohoo! It's the last chapter I have to update before new content! Are you guys as excited as I am? I know that Lizzie is. Well actually from what Lizzie tells me she knows what I have in store for her and is actually not looking forward to the future chapters but pshh, her opinion doesn't matter. I'm the author here. Enjoy! (Updated 5/9/16)**

It was late at night when we finally arrived at our destination. The cold January clouds had parted and the sky was blanketed with the same tiny pinpricks of light that I had stared at my whole life. The fact that those little dots, as bright as brand new LED bulbs, were thousands of light years away baffled me. When I was very young I remember telling Dad that I was going to become an astronaut and bring a star home with me. He had laughed when I told him.

"That's impossible Lizzie, those stars are thousands and thousands of light years away. A light year is the amount of time it takes for light to travel in a year. How fast does light travel now?" He had said, chuckling and kneeling down so he could be at my level.

"Approximately 3 times10^8 meters per second," I had said proudly. I had just recently read a book on light at that time.

"That's right, now that's pretty fast isn't it?" I nodded, "Now imagine how far that light could travel in a year, now times that by thousands. That's how far away those stars are. That's farther than mankind has ever traveled, and can travel with today's technology. Stars are actually huge masses of plasma and gas, that's what our Sun is. Our Sun in the sky is the closest star to us, and it's just a middle sized star. Imagine trying to fit the sun in a rocket! Maybe one day though you'll be able to replicate the makeup of a star on the small scale or something like that, and then you'll be able to have a star," He had smiled and tugged playfully on one of my braids after that. The next day there was a new book on stars on the kitchen counter top for me. I had finished it before lunch.

I told Carolyn about that once. She was appalled by what my dad said to me. That he would crush my dreams like that. I remember how confused I was at her response, it was funny that I thought I could take a star home with me, not appalling that my dad told me that I couldn't. I had quickly explained to her how it wasn't that bad, and it was kind of like getting a question on a test wrong, you need someone to tell you what the actual answer is so you don't go through life thinking that the wrong answer is actually right. She had looked even more confused at my response than I did at her response. Instead of trying to re-explain it to her I had left it at that.

The stars that night reminded me of that moment. Lately a lot of things reminded me of moments in my childhood, the years before I left everything behind to grow up. Mom and Dad weren't there to hold my hand when the going got tough at school. I had to dry my own eyes and figure out a way to get around the problem. Problems were made to be solved, that's why they were called problems.

"Lizzie, come on, I can't guarantee that nobody followed us," Mom said as she turned off the car. Why would anyone follow us? Instead of dwelling on it too long, I grabbed my backpack and followed her. We ended up walking for about five minutes before I actually saw where we were.

It was a house, a big one that sat on the top of a somewhat steep hill. The best way up was a gravel path that wound back and forth up the hill. It was too steep to climb straight up. The house itself had these huge flood lights on every corner which kept the entire hill lit as well as the house. It was probably three stories tall, a Victorian style home, it looked quite quaint on the outside but even from the bottom of the hill I could tell there were some serious security systems all around the house. To name one, the flood lights themselves. They illuminated everything, acting as a protective barrier. It was impossible for anyone to sneak up this hill unnoticed.

"Where are we?" I asked my mom as we started up the hill.

"Your Uncle Arthur's house, it's the closest safe house," The same Uncle who designed the security system for my school, the same Uncle who Mom had said was also a branch leader, the same Uncle whose wife Mom would drop me with when I was younger when she and Dad had to go on business meetings abroad. I hadn't seen him since that week that we spent with him after that night.

Suddenly Mom stopped, we were maybe a quarter of the way up the hill when she turned and wandered off of the path. She slid a rock over and then tapped at something underneath it. I attempted to get a peek at what she was doing but was unsuccessful as she slid the rock back over whatever she was poking at before I could see. I was shocked to see that a section of the hill had opened up to reveal a space just big enough for one person to squeeze through at a time. Mom let me go first and as soon as I had climbed through the little opening it turned into a long hallway, a rather spacious one at that. The hallway was somewhat creepy, there were those long lights that constantly flickered and weren't quite bright enough to fully illuminate the hall. The one's you always saw in scary movies when they were at an abandoned hospital or someplace like that. It creeped me out.

The lights completely went out for a second after Mom climbed through the hole and I quickly clutched her arm. I had never liked the dark. Mom sighed loudly.

"Cut out the shenanigans Arthur, it's me," Mom said, clearly annoyed and acting as if it was some big practical joke. The lights all turned back on, one at a time. What was different about this time was the fact that they weren't flickering anymore and the hallway seemed to be even more illuminated.

"Who is me?" A booming voice came from what appeared to be nowhere, but after a quick second of searching I found a little speaker embedded into the ceiling. For a moment I was fairly certain that I heard a bit of a chuckle come from the speaker. I glanced at it curiously.

"Your sister, now open the door Rook" Mom said, talking to one of the speakers in the wall. I assumed that Rook was his nickname or something like that. It was a chess piece, one of my favorite ones for whenever I played chess. When I played with Carolyn – much to her annoyance – I usually won easily.

"Ahh, the Queen has returned, is that your little Bishop with you?" I made the assumption that Mom was the Queen, the most powerful piece on the board, and that I was the Bishop, which was much better than being a pawn.

"Yes, she's with me," Mom started walking again and I could see a door at the end of the hallway and I followed her.

"Good. Wait a second… I thought we agreed on the codenames a month ago! I am King and you are Queen! What's with this Rook stuff? Isn't Marie the Rook?" The voice wasn't booming anymore, instead it sounded like a regular person. Mom laughed loudly.

"You do realize that all the King can really do during a chess game is sit there while all the other pieces protect him. Actually on second thought that description fits you rather well," Mom responded chuckling. She was right.

"Wait a second!"

"We can talk about codenames in the future King," she snickered, "Right now I'd prefer to get the little Bishop inside,"

"Fine, but we are covering codenames next meeting," the doors at the end of the hall opened, slowly and mechanically, but they opened none the less.

I felt a wave of homesickness as we stepped into the room that was behind the doors. It was decorated very similarly to the way our house was. I could almost see Dad sitting on the chair in the corner, his nose either deep in a book or deep in his student's homework, his reading glasses perched on the end of his nose. But he wasn't actually there; there was however a large potted plant, next to the chair, that I couldn't identify which was strange. I stared at it trying to figure out what the plant actually was, the leaves were too thin to be a Cast-Iron plant but were too wide to be a Dracaena, there was one big central stalk and the leaves looked like someone had taken a paintbrush and painted the lush green leaves with stripes of white and, was that pink?

"Don't even try to figure out what type of plant that is," I turned to find who I assumed to be my Uncle Arthur standing next to my mom. The resemblance between them was impossible to miss, they both had curly brown hair, similar to mine, and bright green eyes (mine were actually brown). Their facial shape was about the same, long and lean, although his was a bit squarer. They were also about the same height and wore glasses, apparently poor eyesight ran in the family. Thankfully I didn't need glasses…yet.

"How'd you know I was-" I started to ask.

"Well every Ekat that comes in here always wants to know what type of plant that is. I don't even know, I'm pretty sure it's some cross between several varieties of houseplants and I think that the pink is actually just a form of synthetic paint that I can't get off no matter how hard I try," I guess that this was my Uncle Arthur, loud, funny, and only slightly insane. It took me a second to figure out what he meant by Ekat, but then I remembered that mom had said something about me being an Ekaterina. Ekat must just have been a shortened version of it.

"Well that makes sense, have you tried nail polish remover?" I knew from experience that acetone removed nearly everything. Very good for getting rid of evidence.

"Yes my dear I have, and several other harsher chemicals than that as well, many of which I had to go full hazmat to use," He smiled widely and I giggled a little at the thought of all that fuss just to try and get some pink paint off of a plant.

"Well anyways Arthur, this is our little Bishop, Elizabeth," My mom interrupted, she seemed to be enjoying the casual exchange of possibilities between Uncle Arthur and I but she had come to get something done and now she was ready to do that.

"I might've known, I haven't seen you since you were yeh big! I would've thought falling out of that tree would've stunted your growth" He held up his hand near his stomach and looked at me laughing at the memories of that day when I was eight. He must've been there.

"I've grown a lot in the last five years I guess, nine and a half inches to be exact. I had to get a new uniform at Anchorage Hill because I had grown so much!" Everyone chuckled for a second before Uncle Arthur turned to Mom. I sat down in the nearest chair as they sat on the couch a couple of feet away.

"Are you sure you weren't followed?" His voice had suddenly gone from the joyful tone it had before when he was joking with me to a more business-like one, his hands folded properly in his lap.

"I made sure, I had to do a few circles to be sure that a blue Subaru wasn't following us but we were okay. Plus I don't think they could make it up that hill without getting caught in one of your security precautions," This was Mom, recounting those few minutes where her breathing had sped up ever so slightly as she continually checked the rear-view mirror until she decided that there wasn't anyone following us.

"Did you get Elizabeth out okay?" I jumped for a second at the sound of my name.

"Yes, I think she's still having some trouble believing me, and I accidentally set off the school alarms because I forgot to keep my gun in the car and not in my purse so the school went on lock-down. Good job on the security system at that school, I can see why so many politicians send their children there. Anyways, I think she's starting to put the whole Cahill thing together."

The whole Cahill thing was more believable than it had been earlier, I think I was having a little trouble completely accepting it mainly because I had so firmly told Carolyn that it wasn't real and the fact that they were books also somewhat deterred my belief in them. It all made sense though; the best way to hide something is to tell the world about it in the form of a fictional book. You'd have some crazy fans who would believe it's real but in the back of their minds they'd know it wasn't. That's just how our brains work. They accept something as fiction but want it to be real so badly that they believe it's the truth but they still know it is fiction, but in actuality it is real, they just don't know it because they were tricked into believing that it was fiction. A perfect system, or well almost perfect. It was impossible for anything to be perfect; there were always loopholes in everything. Even high-tech security systems had their flaws, flaws that enabled me to get inside of them. Perhaps I would tell Uncle Arthur about the faults in his security system that I had exploited many times before.

"Did you hear any more about the F.I.T. watch?" mom said, her eyes darted over to where I was sitting for a moment. I immediately started trying to figure out what F.I.T. meant. Forced Intelligence Testing? Finland's Integral Treaty? Families in Training? Future Industrial Technologies? There were a million possibilities, yet none of the ones that I came up with made any sense.

"Yes, but we best not speak about it here, I don't want to scare her on her first day of being a Cahill," He looked over at me, a look of concern crossing over his face.

"What is it?" I asked, unable to figure out what in the world F.I.T. stood for.

"Honestly Elizabeth you do not want to know," Uncle Arthur said quietly.

"Yes I do, I'm tired of secrets being kept from me. You've kept secrets from me for 15 years," I responded back, pushing myself up from my chair and looking at them both.

"Fine, but I have to tell you that people will be keeping secrets from you, and you will be keeping secrets from others your entire life, it is the nature of a Cahill," his face was solemn; he almost seemed to grow older by the minute. "F.I.T. means Future Intelligence Target," Well I did guess the intelligence part, "I'm sure your mom already talked to you about the e-mail that we intercepted a couple of days ago. Somebody must have figured out that you weren't living with your father like we had told them you were and added your name to the list. The thing with F.I.T.'s is that they usually have no training but have family members that are very high up in the branches. Like you. You actually have two close family members up high in the branch, your mother and I head the entire Ekaterina branch. I've seen other branches take advantage of F.I.T.'s many times before use them as leverage to gain secrets, mainly clues, but other things as well," he paused as Mom started talking.

"You've technically been considered an F.I.T. your entire life, that night when the Lucian agents broke in they used your life as leverage to try and get clues out of your father and then me," she paused and looked down at the ground, likely thinking about that night. She did give up a clue, whether or not Uncle Arthur knew about that was another thing though. Perhaps she felt guilt about it? She snapped out of her brief moment of quietness to continue, "Thankfully your father was able to incapacitate them before they could either kill you or take you away, because they would have. In a heartbeat," Her voice was quiet. She wasn't joking, and that was a scary thought.

"I just received word about two hours before you got here that Tomas agents were spotted on the school grounds at Calderwood, you had left maybe an hour before then. Thankfully nobody was hurt and they left as soon as the police arrived. Exactly what would've happened if you had still been there, I can't say. The brains of a Tomas are so small that we can't possibly think the same way they do," he smiled widely at his joke and Mom punched him in the arm, "What! It's true!"

"Okay," I said, still trying to soak up all of this new information. I was still trying to make sense of what Mom had said in the car on the way here, and this constant onslaught of new information that still wasn't quite clicking together created what felt like a huge traffic jam in my brain. Finally my mind caught up with what had just been said and my thoughts stopped in their tracks. _Mom sent me away to protect me. _Mom and Uncle Arthur were staring at my blank expression but on the inside I felt so confused that I probably wouldn't be able to solve a quanitive equation, although I doubt that I would need to at this present moment. It was like a rollercoaster ride, this constant up and down of a brief moment of clarity before plunging back down into confusion. "Do you think you could explain the branches again?" I asked staring down at my feet. I remembered Ekaterina because that's what I was. They were the smart ones. Mom and Uncle Arthur looked at each other before Uncle Arthur started talking.

"Well let's see we have the dumb Tomas who can barely tell a chicken from an orange. We have the Janus whose spend more time painting then doing anything, then there is the Lucian who-" But Mom cut her brother off mid-sentence, sending him a death-glare. I think that was one of her favorite faces to send to her younger brother.

"Well you might as well know about the leaders of all of the branches, follow me," Mom pushed herself up from the couch quickly and began walking down the hall until she reached a room that had no windows at all. The beige walls were covered in various pictures and artifacts, from what looked like old family pictures to huge samurai swords. Mom was standing in front of one picture in particular that was a little bit different than the rest.

"Welcome to my family history room," Uncle Arthur smiled motioning to the whole room. I stared somewhat awestruck at everything but my attention always came back to what Mom was standing by. "That is what creates our family," Uncle Arthur said pointing to the frame. I walked up to get a closer look.

**Is anyone else noticing that these chapters are getting progressively longer? Do you like the longer chapters or would you prefer shorter ones? What do you think of everything so far? Make sure to comment your praise, criticism, feedback, musings, and guesses! **

**Safety Tip: Make sure to actually whisper if you don't want anyone else to hear you. **


	10. A Little Family Reunion

**Guess what! I come bearing gifts of a new chapter! Let me know what you think! **

Four crest looking things were lined up in a row in the frame. A dragon, with its mighty yellow wings spread out adorned the first one. A scary looking two headed snake wrapped itself around a sword on the red one; the snake heads looking ready to attack anything that moved. A large bear found itself on the blue one, and on the last crest thing there was a ferocious looking green wolf.

"These crests represent all four currently known branches," Mom began pointing towards all of the pictures.

"Didn't you say there was a fifth?" I asked noticing that there were only four branches shown and remembering what she said in the car on the way here.

"You told her about them?!" Uncle Arthur whispered rather urgently to Mom even though I could still hear him. He wasn't a very effective whisperer.

"It just kind of slipped out," she admitted quickly before facing back towards me and pushing up her glasses, "as I said before we don't really know much about the fifth branch. Anyways, the four branches of the Cahill family. We are the Ekaterina's as you already know," she pointed towards the yellow crest, changing the subject. "Do you remember all of the characteristics?" I nodded, "well, the leaders of this branch are your Uncle and I. Hence why you were in a bit more danger than most F.I.T.'s. Your Uncle here deals with all of the technological aspects of the branch, heading research teams, coming up with new invention ideas, supplying us all with computers, he keeps everyone high tech and up to speed. I take care of all the hard stuff," she smirked at her brother, "I used to head missions but as I've gotten older I've moved away from the mission's and such. Now I plan them, I also deal with relationships between other branches, and deal with problems when they arrive. While Arthur here just tinkers around," Uncle Arthur opened his mouth to protest but Mom brushed him off.

"The Tomas branch is led by somebody named Raymond Sidel although everyone that is even remotely interested in athletics calls him "Marlin". I don't know why, most of the Tomas have strange nicknames-" Mom continued but was interrupted by her brother.

"So they can make up for their lack of brain power," Uncle Arthur added in quickly before starting to laugh at his own joke but soon stopped and shrank away as Mom, as I could have guessed, gave him another death glare.

"Anyways, the Janus leader is Vera Winters, famous painter. I would like to believe that she spends all of her time painting but that is not the reality. She's a very effective leader and we've had several close calls with the Janus before, although _King _here doesn't like to admit that. Especially since the last one was his fault," Uncle Arthurs face surged with anger and turned a fiery red, although he didn't say anything. Knowing that he'd just get shushed. "The last branch is the Lucian branch. I don't know a person alive today, well maybe except Helena, that isn't afraid of Evelyn-" Mom started.

"Good God Janette! You don't want to scare the poor girl, talking about Evelyn on her first day as a Cahill!" He interrupted mom as she was speaking, apparently he was ready to face the death glare that I thought was sure to come, but it didn't. Wasn't Evelyn who the men were talking about that night? She was mentioned several times that night, she must have been who sent them. If that was the case then I didn't want to have anything to do with her, ever.

Mom sighed, "You can't shelter her from everything Arthur, and I know that now. She asked to hear the truth so the truth she'll get and that involves Evelyn. Anyways if you cross paths with Evelyn Hartley, the Lucian branch leader, you'll either need to get out of the situation you're in as fast as you can or somehow convince her that you're not a Cahill-"

"Which is a lot harder than it seems, Lucian's are experts at lie-detecting. I learned this a few years back when Mrs. Hartley and I's paths crossed. That was a rather unfortunate event, I was-"

"-Thank you for that little snippet Arthur, didn't you say something about not scaring her? Anyways, technically the Lucian branch is run by both Evelyn and her husband Stefan. Although everyone knows that it's Evelyn who's running things, and she's very _very_ good at it,"

"Emphasis on very, I'm never going to forget that night," Uncle Arthur didn't have the somewhat giddy grin on his face anymore. It reminded me of what Carolyn looked like when she told me about her family back at home. I had a feeling that one of these days I was going to hear the story about Evelyn and him. Mom looked down at her phone and then immediately started talking with Uncle Arthur, except that they were a bit better a whispering this time though. So, unsure as to what to do, I started examining the various pictures and artifacts that were framed on the walls.

There were tons of pictures everywhere, some in color, some in black and white, some partially destroyed by what looked like burn marks. I glanced over them. Several of them caught my interest almost immediately. I think mainly since I was in them. A couple of them had either corners burned off or long streaks of smoke black on them from what I assumed to be caused by flames. One of the ones I was looking at happened to be of me, and two other boys. I probably wasn't more than 4 or 5 in the picture and both of the other boys looked maybe a year or so older than me. The picture itself was in black and white but it looked more like the picture had been originally in color but whoever took the picture decided to put a black and white filter on it. It looked like maybe the picture had been taken at our old house, the little table that I was sitting on I remembered seeing when I was younger. One of the boys who either had black or brown hair was standing behind the little white table, and the darker skinned boy was sitting on the floor, leaning against one of the table legs. He was waving, presumably, at the photographer while the other boy looked bored out of his mind. I on the other hand was clutching a stuffed bear, _Curie, _I thought as I stared at the small toy. Mom had given him to me on I think my 5th birthday, she also told him his name before teaching me all about Marie Curie. _I wonder if she was an Ekaterina? _I thought to myself as I moved to the next picture. _It would be really cool if Marie Curie, one of the most awesome scientists in the world was related to me!_

I wasn't in the next photo that I looked at. But I'm pretty sure that mom and Uncle Arthur were. The strange thing about this picture was that it was actually part of a newspaper article. They were both smiling widely, standing in front of what looked like a presentation. Uncle Arthur was holding a large ribbon and mom was holding a very oversized check. The caption underneath the picture read, **"****Whiz-kid siblings win National Science Fair". **I looked back at Mom and her brother, who were still whispering. The article went into more detail on their project. It was actually kind of cool to think about how my mom and my uncle had won the national science fair. A competition I had always wanted to win. It reminded me of my own unfinished science fair project that was probably still sitting in my dorm room and all the data I had collected was stored in my laptop which was still sitting on my desk. The relationship between Martian craters and their proximity to volcanos would have to wait until another year, oh well.

I looked at a few more pictures, most of them being family pictures where everyone looked less than happy to be there. A couple of pictures of uncle Arthur with various famous people, the president, the lady from "Good Morning America", diplomats from various countries, oh my gosh was that Stephen Hawking?! Conclusion: My uncle had met some pretty awesome people, like Stephen Hawking, and the president, and freaking Stephen Hawking. _I wonder if he's an Ekaterina. That'd be really cool. I could be related to Stephen freaking Hawking too! _After freaking out a little bit with that thought I looked over at some oil paintings. All of them were aging and several had bits missing, with the typical bite that fire makes on corners as well as the same smoky fingers that turned the oily colors into nothing but black smudges.

I glanced over at another picture that was burnt, it was missing a large corner almost like it was a cookie and someone had taken a bite out of it. Looking more closely, I saw myself in it, and Mom, and Dad, and Chloe who couldn't have been older than 1 or 2 and was being held by Mom. I looked to be around the age of 5, my hair at this point was still straight as it didn't start to curl until I was around 10 or 11, it was in two short braids and I was again holding Curie the stuffed bear. Dad had safety glasses perched on the top of his head and Mom looked like she was about to leave, she had her coat on and I'm pretty sure that there was a suitcase partially hidden behind the table that we were all standing in front of. We looked happy, one big happy family, or at least the good parts of what I remembered from my childhood. Dad used to always make jokes around the dinner table when Mom was gone.

I looked over at a 4th picture, it was a candid shot, that looked like it might have been taken from behind a bush or something since there were the tips of branches at the very bottom. I could tell who the main focus of the picture was though, it was a woman. A very beautiful woman, with dark black curls, and a sort of air about her that let you know that she was important yet also someone not to be messed with. Standing next to her was the same boy from the first picture I had looked at, he was clutching, who I assumed to be, his mother's hand and was boasting an award winning smile that just barely under-shined his mothers.

"Meeting the family are we?" I quickly turned around to see Uncle Arthur standing behind me, he was looking quietly at some of the pictures. "That there is Evelyn, and her little twit of a son Nicholas,"

"He was in the picture of me and of the other boy, I think it was taken at our old house," I said pointing out the picture that I was referencing. Uncle Arthur walked towards it and peered closely at it, looking over the top of his glasses. He smiled for a moment but switched to a frown just moments later.

"Yes," He said quietly, "I remember that day, very tough time for the Cahill's." He paused, and I was curious as to what he meant by that statement. Did something happen that day? "You're an Ekaterina, Lizzie. I'd like you to take one look around this room and figure something out for me," He forced his mouth into a smile.

"What do you want me to figure out?" I asked, looking around at the pictures and artifacts. He only smiled weakly and motioned towards the photos.

I didn't know what to do, I stood somewhat stunned and mainly confused while glancing around. The pictures were obviously some sort of puzzle and I had always liked puzzles. The only thing was that I knew how puzzles were supposed to end and just had to figure my way there. In this instance I didn't know either. What was I supposed to be looking for? I looked for patterns in the empty spaces, tried to see if there was some correlation between if a photo had a wooden or metal frame, searched for some sort of sign or something that was the same with all of them. I couldn't figure it out.

"I-I don't know," I mumbled, slightly ashamed of myself. I wanted to impress him for some reason that I couldn't quite understand and I felt that I had let him down.

"Look harder, pretend to be Sherlock Holmes," He smiled, this time more believably.

_Pretend to be Sherlock Holmes. _His final words seemed to make something click in my mind and I began examining each picture closely, the one thing that really stood out was the difference between the ones with burn marks and the ones without. The ones who had been burned didn't have as much dust over top of the glass or on the frame. One of which I knew for certain had been a painting at home when I was younger. Then it hit me.

"Our old house is gone, isn't it?" I asked quietly, my hand resting gently on a singed wooden frame. He nodded. "It burned," I added and he again nodded. This explained why Mom and I didn't return to our old house. There was no Elder house anymore. I hadn't seen it in five years but the blow was still harsh and hard to comprehend.

"Somebody burnt it while your mother, your father, your little sister Chloe, and myself were inside. I know you're probably wondering why in the world it is important for you to know that but it's my one piece of evidence for you as to what in the world you're getting yourself into as a Cahill. I will admit I pushed my sister to bring you into the clue hunt earlier, actually if I recall you fell out of a tree one time during one of those particular meetings," he paused to chuckle, "There are those in this family who will resort to whatever measures necessary to get ahead in the game. I don't mean to scare you but the doors were barred shut when the fire alarm went off," he paused to let that sink in, "I'm giving you the choice now, you have the intelligence of an Ekaterina and you would make a swell agent but you need to know what that entails," He paused to wait for my response.

There was something strange about Uncle Arthur, for a while he would seem joyful and cracking jokes every three seconds and then minutes later he'd be telling me something dark and scary. The thought of somebody purposefully trying to kill my family terrified me, of course I had been held at gunpoint before and almost kidnapped so it shouldn't have been too outlandish to think about. Uncle Arthur made a really good point. It was obvious that the Cahill's were dangerous and I didn't really want to be poking death in the nose, but at the same time I didn't want to lose my family. I had just regained them again and I knew that if I said I didn't want to be a Cahill any more that I'd probably be sent off to another boarding school. I didn't want to lose them again.

"I'll need to think about it," I answered quietly, staring at one of the burnt photos. I looked over towards mom's direction, she was furiously typing on her phone and her eyebrows were knit together.

"You won't have too long to make your decision, once you're in there's no escaping. Especially in your case," He stopped for a moment to look at mom as well, she was motioning frantically for him to come over to her. He adjusted his glasses and once again left me alone to stare at the pictures.

I had a big decision on my hands, lose my family again or take on a life of danger. If Carolyn was in my position I knew that she wouldn't have hesitated to accept her spot as a Cahill. There was also the family aspect, she didn't have much of a family and here I was being brought into the most powerful family in the world. If Carolyn was me it would have been a no-brainer. It wouldn't have mattered either way though, I probably would never have been allowed to return to Calderwood and I probably would never see Carolyn again. The least I could do was accept the family she had always dreamed about and not give them up. I couldn't lose my family again. I wasn't going to let them leave me ever again either. Never

**Wow, it feels so good to finally post something new instead of just updating. I hope you liked it, make sure to comment your thoughts on it below! Because I made you guys wait so long I'd be happy to answer some of your questions if you have them and if they don't spoil anything. Comment your questions down below and I'll get to them when I update the next chapter. **

**Safety Tip: Always have extra clothes on hand. **


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